He scanned the plane or, more precisely, what was left of it. The tail was cracked and partially separated from the fuselage. The gunner’s body lay tangled in the cargo net, like a fly spun in a spider’s cocoon. A flash of applying bandages to the man’s punctured abdomen, the helplessness of watching him bleed out, no matter how hard he pressed. The hole was too big, his hands too small. Ollie shook away the image and turned his attention to his shoulder.

He clasped his clavicle and tried popping his shoulder into place but could only manage to raise his arm a few inches before spasms tore into his shoulder blade. His arm burned, like his nerves had been set on fire. He clenched his teeth. I can’t just leave my shoulder like this. Before he could change his mind, he wrapped his wrist in the cargo net and gripped the webbing. The dead gunner dangled above him. Ollie’s heart pounded. His ears thumped with rushing blood. He bit his lip and leaned back. His arm stretched. Tendons strained. He braced his legs against the fuselage and pulled harder. Excruciating pain ravaged his shoulder. But his arm didn’t pop into place.

He eased off his weight, untangled his wrist, and fell back. He sucked in gulps of air until the pain subsided to a dull pang. Wiping sweat from his brow, he looked to the cockpit. Limbs of a large oak tree had pierced the cockpit glass and sprouted toward the gunner’s turret. His heart sank. They couldn’t have survived that. But he heard something faint, masked by whistling wind over shards of metal. He listened. Moaning.

Ollie got to his knees and crawled toward the cockpit, his useless arm hanging at his side. Another spasm spiked into his shoulder. With one hand, he struggled to break away branches and thick limbs, and realized it would take him too long to reach the pilots at this pace, especially with the growing smell of fuel. So he wriggled through the crack in the fuselage and slid to the ground. As he stood, pain shot through his ankle.

He steadied himself against a broken wing, its engine ripped away and sitting in the field like a fallen meteorite. A deep rut ran through the field from the skidding Blenheim, abruptly stopped by trees bordering a forest. He limped to the front of the plane, feeling his swelling ankle press against his boot.

The Blenheim had severed a tree, most of which was gouged into the cockpit. He climbed onto the nose, taking several attempts to find his footing, and cleared away chunks of glass. He stuck his head inside and immediately realized there was nothing he could do for the copilot. A sharp limb, launched like a wooden javelin, protruded from the man’s neck. A St. Christopher medallion dangled over his jacket. Ollie winced and turned to the pilot.